This weekend saw the first of what will likely be more “unevents” for the Internet community in Toronto. “Torcamp”:http://barcamp.org/index.cgi?TorCamp “instigated”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/10/28/5-questions-for-david-crow-instigator-torcamp by “David Crow”:http://www.davidcrow.ca started Friday evening at the Social Bar and continued on for a full day at the offices of “Teehan+Lax”:http://www.teehanlax.com who were nice enough to host the free-form eye-opener.
The “Torcamp Wiki”:http://barcamp.org/index.cgi?TorCamp is being updated with information on Torcamp and possible future events. You can see the “Flickr Torcamp Tags”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/torcamp/ to get a small sense of what it was like but you really had to be there to understand the openness, sharing, and general energy present in the room(s).
Two of the more thorough write-ups are by:
Category: Industry News
Torcamp is this weekend in Toronto. David Crow is instigating, Jon Lax is hosting, and loads of interesting people have already signed on to attend.
Find out what Torcamp is, see who’s going to be there, and sign yourself up today…
One thing I’m willing to bet every Internet marketer reading this has in common is that your parents still probably don’t fully understand what you do for a living.
I can’t tell you how many times my parents (both of whom are highly educated professionals) will inform me that they ran into someone at a party that was “in the same line of work as you are, dear.” When I do a bit of digging, nine times out of ten it turns out that the supposed ‘industry colleague’ they’ve met is actually a Web designer or IT support person.
“For the last time, mom and dad, I don’t build Web sites and I don’t fix computers! My clients already have Websites and IT people. What they don’t have is enough sales or a reliable way to accomplish that.”
At least that’s what I imagine myself saying to my parents, but usually I just thank them for the information and politely change the topic.
I can hardly blame my parents, or anyone else I meet who is confused about what Internet marketing is, when I see how some of us describe what we do. For instance, check out what one agency that I have been told does Internet marketing uses on the “Services” page of their corporate Website: